Read Online The Friar and the Cipher by Lawrence Goldstone - Free Book Online
Authors: Lawrence Goldstone
Tags: Fiction
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a boy away to school
There to become an arrant fool?
When he should be acquiring sense,
He wastes his time and all his pence,
And to his friends brings only shame,
While they suppose him winning fame. *2
The animosity between the university and the rest of the city grew steadily until, in 1200, the school won a decisive victory over the citizens of Paris. The incident began when a German student's servant went down to the local pub to purchase some wine for his employer. There was a disagreement over price, and the tavern owner insulted the servant. The servant went back to the German student empty-handed. The student rounded up some of his compatriots and took them to the bar, where they proceeded to trash the establishment and beat up the owner. There was outrage in the city, and the civilian authority, under the command of the royal provost, got up its own mob, went over to the German student's quarters, and in retaliation killed a bunch of university people, including the German student.
The masters, who understood their growing power in a city that was becoming more and more dependent on the university as an industry, called on the king to act against his own provost. They threatened to close the school and initiate a mass exodus of the faculty if their demands were not met. Philip Augustus was in power, and he ruled without hesitation in favor of the masters. Not only did he throw all of the Parisians involved in the incident, including his own provost, into prison for life, but he seized their lands, burned their houses, and then pursued those who fled from the city across France and brought them back for the same punishment. Just to make sure nobody crossed this line again, Philip Augustus issued a charter giving all scholars clerical status, which meant that they could not be tried in civil courts, nor could their property or persons be seized.
In the end, though, the primacy of the University of Paris was secured not by the kings of France but by its most powerful alumnus, Innocent III. Innocent, who had seen the potential of the University firsthand, moved quickly to make Paris the vehicle with which to provide Rome with a steady stream of superior theology graduates. In 1209, he issued a charter confirming what amounted to a guild of masters and essentially placed it under papal protection, a policy that would be continued by subsequent popes. From that time on, the University of Paris became the papacy's school, the acme of theological study, and, most important, a prerequisite to high ecclesiastic office.
Innocent and the theological faculty were in fundamental agreement over what should and should not be taught, but the arts faculty had different ideas. All those brawling, drunken students, who came to the school not to study theology but for degrees in law or medicine gave the arts masters significant clout and helped them grow into a political force. By sheer power of numbers, the arts faculty could now battle on equal terms with the more conservative theology masters. At the time, no one anticipated that this battle would evolve into the philosophical struggle for the soul of Christianity that it was to become, with the arts masters—of whom Roger Bacon would become the most prominent example—championing science and a more intellectually inclusive Church and the theology masters trying to hold back the dual tides of reform and secular knowledge.
The rift began in earnest in 1210, when Peter of Corbeil, the archbishop of Sens, who had been Innocent's own theological master at Paris two decades earlier, banned a number of books representing the new learning, among them Aristotle's works on natural philosophy (as science was known through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance) and Avicenna's commentaries. The banned books were not to be “read at Paris in public or secret.” This ban would be reissued periodically, but to no avail. The arts faculty continued to read and debate Aristotle and his
There to become an arrant fool?
When he should be acquiring sense,
He wastes his time and all his pence,
And to his friends brings only shame,
While they suppose him winning fame. *2
The animosity between the university and the rest of the city grew steadily until, in 1200, the school won a decisive victory over the citizens of Paris. The incident began when a German student's servant went down to the local pub to purchase some wine for his employer. There was a disagreement over price, and the tavern owner insulted the servant. The servant went back to the German student empty-handed. The student rounded up some of his compatriots and took them to the bar, where they proceeded to trash the establishment and beat up the owner. There was outrage in the city, and the civilian authority, under the command of the royal provost, got up its own mob, went over to the German student's quarters, and in retaliation killed a bunch of university people, including the German student.
The masters, who understood their growing power in a city that was becoming more and more dependent on the university as an industry, called on the king to act against his own provost. They threatened to close the school and initiate a mass exodus of the faculty if their demands were not met. Philip Augustus was in power, and he ruled without hesitation in favor of the masters. Not only did he throw all of the Parisians involved in the incident, including his own provost, into prison for life, but he seized their lands, burned their houses, and then pursued those who fled from the city across France and brought them back for the same punishment. Just to make sure nobody crossed this line again, Philip Augustus issued a charter giving all scholars clerical status, which meant that they could not be tried in civil courts, nor could their property or persons be seized.
In the end, though, the primacy of the University of Paris was secured not by the kings of France but by its most powerful alumnus, Innocent III. Innocent, who had seen the potential of the University firsthand, moved quickly to make Paris the vehicle with which to provide Rome with a steady stream of superior theology graduates. In 1209, he issued a charter confirming what amounted to a guild of masters and essentially placed it under papal protection, a policy that would be continued by subsequent popes. From that time on, the University of Paris became the papacy's school, the acme of theological study, and, most important, a prerequisite to high ecclesiastic office.
Innocent and the theological faculty were in fundamental agreement over what should and should not be taught, but the arts faculty had different ideas. All those brawling, drunken students, who came to the school not to study theology but for degrees in law or medicine gave the arts masters significant clout and helped them grow into a political force. By sheer power of numbers, the arts faculty could now battle on equal terms with the more conservative theology masters. At the time, no one anticipated that this battle would evolve into the philosophical struggle for the soul of Christianity that it was to become, with the arts masters—of whom Roger Bacon would become the most prominent example—championing science and a more intellectually inclusive Church and the theology masters trying to hold back the dual tides of reform and secular knowledge.
The rift began in earnest in 1210, when Peter of Corbeil, the archbishop of Sens, who had been Innocent's own theological master at Paris two decades earlier, banned a number of books representing the new learning, among them Aristotle's works on natural philosophy (as science was known through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance) and Avicenna's commentaries. The banned books were not to be “read at Paris in public or secret.” This ban would be reissued periodically, but to no avail. The arts faculty continued to read and debate Aristotle and his
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